FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta plans to replay the Clasico against Real Madrid.
Laporta demanded that the club immediately receive documentation of the referee’s report and audio and visual recordings from the VAR room during the 3-2 defeat against Madrid. Laporta believes there was a clear error in the decision not to award the phantom goal Lamine Yamal thought he had scored.
Barça’s grand sachem issued a statement on the club’s official social media to request this video material and state that if there was an error on the part of the refereeing team, FC Barcelona would take legal action to replay the match.
No precedent in Spain
“FC Barcelona immediately requests the Technical Commission of Referees (CTA) and the RFEF to provide it with all the images and sound generated by the game (of Lamine Yamal’s ghost goal). If, after analyzing the documentation, the club understands that there was an error in the evaluation of the game, which we believe, we will implement the appropriate measures necessary to reverse the situation, without excluding, of course, legal situations that could arise. If it is confirmed that it was a legal goal, as we believe, we will go further and request that the match be replayed, as happened in another European match due to a VAR error. »
“As Barca president, I would like to express the dissatisfaction caused by the fact that, one day after one of the most important matches on the world calendar, a tool such as VAR determines our agenda. I’ve never been a big advocate of VAR because it robs the game of its spontaneity. But since we have it, I am in favor of using it to avoid errors that lead to unfair decisions, rather than creating confusion and displaying contradictory criteria depending on matches and teams.
In Spain, there is no precedent for a match to be restarted for a refereeing error, and although some images give the impression that the ball has completely crossed the line, in the absence of technology on the goal line or a camera placed at the correct angle, it seems impossible to “prove” the error.
